Head of government: de facto Taliban council leader, Mullah Mohammad Rabbani

Military successes by Afghanistan’s Taliban government appeared to move the country closer to a unified political authority in 1998 than at any other time since the Soviet invasion of 1979. This consolidation of power, however, provoked international and regional tensions that threatened to destabilize the region and the Muslim world.

Official Taliban restrictions on the education and employment of women brought critical reaction from the UN and other aid workers. In June the Taliban closed Kabul’s private schools for women, including vocational training programs. The European Commission, complaining of restrictions on education, health care, and employment for women, suspended millions of dollars of funding for aid projects in July. Ordered to move their activities to a compound outside the city, most international aid workers left Kabul rather than comply.

In August Mazar-e Sharif, the centre of anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan, fell to Taliban forces. This ended a stalemate in which Afghanistan had been divided between the Taliban, who controlled Kabul and the south of the country, and forces allied with the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, confined mostly to an area north of the Hindu Kush. The Rabbani government had been driven from Kabul in September 1996 by the Taliban but had joined with Uzbek militia and troops of the Hezb-i Wahdat, a Shi!ite group of ethnic Hazara Afghans, in the Northern Alliance. After the fall of Mazar-e Sharif, Hazara fighters withdrew toward their central Afghan stronghold in Bamiyan, whereas forces led by Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Masoud continued to resist from mountainous areas north of Kabul. By mid-September Bamiyan too had fallen, and the Taliban controlled more than 90% of Afghanistan.

Only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates recognized the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under Supreme Leader (Amir-ul-Momenin) Mullah Mohammad Omar and a Council of Ministers headed by Mullah Mohammad Rabbani. Most other countries and the UN continued to recognize the Islamic State of Afghanistan, led by Pres. Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The consolidation of authority by the predominantly Pashtun Taliban aggravated tensions between Pashtuns and Afghanistan’s other ethnic groups. In addition, the circumstances of the Taliban victory exposed a profound split between the staunchly Sunni Taliban and Shi!ite Iran, which had supported Afghanistan’s Shi!ite minority. Taliban forces had occupied Mazar-e Sharif for a few days in 1997. During their withdrawal several thousand Taliban fighters had been taken captive and, as mass graves later revealed, massacred. The Taliban held Hazara forces primarily responsible for these killings. At the same time, Iran, long seen as military backers of the Shi!ite Hazara, became a focus of Taliban hostility. During the capture of Mazar-e Sharif in August, at least nine Iranians were killed when their consulate was stormed. Iran reacted by announcing a buildup of 200,000 troops along its border with Afghanistan, and Taliban officials proclaimed their readiness to attack Iranian cities with missiles.

On August 20 U.S. missiles fired from the Arabian Sea struck training camps near Khost, south of Kabul, reportedly killing more than 20. The U.S. said that the camps were terrorist training bases used by Saudi Arabian dissident Osama bin Laden (see BIOGRAPHIES), who was suspected of having financed the August 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden, who had been living in exile in Afghanistan since 1996. In November the Taliban reported that, since they had received no evidence from the U.S. of bin Laden’s culpability, he was a free man.

In February an earthquake struck the area near Rustaq in Takhar province, near the border with Tajikistan. Reports suggested that more than 4,000 may have died. In May a second earthquake shook the same location, and aid workers reported that 5,000 had died. (SeeDISASTERS.)

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January 13, Southwestern Pakistan. An Afghan cargo plane carrying 51 persons, including members of the Islamic Taliban militia, ran out of fuel and slammed into a mountainside in a remote area; there were no survivors.